(UM03-04) - Characteristics Of And Determinants Of The Density Of Contributions in a Private Social Security SystemDavid Bravo, Jere Behrman and Osvaldo Larrañaga

This proposal is on the SSA identified priority research areas (5) “international research on pension and Social Security issues” and (6) “distributional aspects of proposed Social Security reforms” and will target reform areas related to expected participation in voluntary plan and the distributional aspects of selected reforms. It will investigate some unresearched issues pertaining to the well-known Chilean innovations in Social Security. Previous empirical studies of the Chilean system used aggregate and macro data, without attention to individual heterogeneity. This study will use new household survey data, linked with Social Security records for over 20 years, to analyze selected reform issues related to social security coverage and the density and continuity of contributions to the social security system. The results will lead to better understanding of the participation determinants and distributional aspects of the Chilean system, lay the groundwork for policy changes, and illuminate implications of the system reforms for other countries.